1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to systems and methods for processing rights expressions, and more particularly to a system and method for granting access to an item or permission to use an item based on configurable conditions.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Digital distribution of content, by content owners, over the Internet is a way to reach out to a potentially large market of Internet users. However, such digital distribution comes with a risk of illegal or otherwise unauthorized, distribution of the content.
Rights Management helps reduce such a risk, thereby enabling content owners to protect and profit from their digital content, for example, based on usage rights that can be used to specify conditions that need be satisfied in order to access the digital content. However, a system, service, device or a consumer may be unable to or unwilling to support certain types of conditions in such rights expressions. For example, an application may not support rights expressions containing fee conditions or an application may not support rights expressions issued by a certain issuer.
In addition, a condition to grant permission can be that the device is to be operated within a certain territory, for example, a given country, state, county, city, and the like. However, the device may not be inside such a territory.
Further, a condition to grant permission can include that a consumer posses a certain type of credential or qualification, such as a club membership, a role in an organization, and the like. However, the consumer may not possess such a credential or qualification. In addition, enforcing of a condition can incur significant fees or other costs to the consumer. For example, the fee and cost may include non-monetary considerations, such as with respect to frequent flyer miles, an agreement to join a club, an agreement to watch (e.g., click through) commercials, filling out of surveys, etc.
Still further, a consumer may have a preference as to certain conditions. However, some of such preferences may be subject to change based on time, location or other factors. In addition, such preferences may need to be expressed in an interactive manner. For example, a consumer may value airline frequent flyer miles at $1 per 100 miles at the beginning of the year and at $1 per 50 miles when the consumer is accumulating the miles for a European vacation.
With current methods and systems, typically, there is no easy way for an application to address the above-noted problems. For example, an application can either pick the first matching rights expression or randomly pick a matching rights expression from a set returned by an interpreter. However, such a method may either select a matching rights expression, including unsupported condition expressions or select a rights expression that is not cost effective or not preferable to a consumer.
An application could have built-in capabilities to analyze the matching rights expressions returned by an interpreter. However, this requires each application to comprehend and process condition expressions and the matching rights expressions, placing a heavy burden on such an application.